Origami Consulting

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I worked with Origami while I was the principal of a venture capital fund. Now, I work with them as the CEO of a startup.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Origami Consulting?

I invested in a company that was building a platform to focus on word-of-mouth lead generation. We had an engineering team but they needed more experience in e-commerce and other technical aspects.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

They built a sophisticated .NET platform that allowed us to map a social graph and interpret local intent. The first phase was scoping out what the needs were. In the second phase, they built the APIs, the infrastructure, the algorithms, and the databases. Phase three was getting the test data and seeing how it performed relative to the desired outcome.

Since this project was successful, I hired Origami again to do two more projects for me. Currently, they’re doing a big project for me at my new company.

What is the team composition?

I worked with ten people from their team.

How did you come to work with Origami Consulting?

A friend of mine that I worked with in the past worked with Origami in the past. I reached out

How much have you invested with them?

We spent north of $100,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in Fall 2015. The project lasted about a year.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement? 

The company we were funding never launched the platform because we chose not to fund them anymore. It was less because of Origami and more because of the company’s CEO. We were able to sell the company, and part of the value was attributed to the platform that Origami built.

How did Origami Consulting perform from a project management standpoint?

We had daily standups with the Origami team and the CEO of the company we were funding. Origami also sent out regular emails. 

They’ve always been on time in delivering whatever we’ve agreed to. We met regularly and at every point in time, they were beyond communicative and transparent. They even worked overtime whenever we needed a quick turnaround.

In our most recent project, we speak up to three times a day, six days a week.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They deliver Silicon Valley excellence at half the cost.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They’re very busy. Getting into their queue if you don’t know them well can be challenging. I wish they had more bandwidth.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

My advice is to be clear with what you want to be built. I’ve found them to be a partner more than a consultant. Be open and aware of the fact that the team might have a better way to deliver what you want. The team is super experienced and you should approach the relationship collaboratively.